Any Bonds Today?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bugs Bunny appears alongside Porky Pig and a chubbier Elmer Fudd.
Bugs Bunny appears alongside Porky Pig and a chubbier Elmer Fudd.

Any Bonds Today? is a 1942 one and a half minute propaganda film distributed by Warner Bros. during World War II. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger's Termite Terrace studio and directed by Bob Clampett for the U.S. Treasury Department. The song for the short had been written by Irving Berlin, who also wrote the songs for Holiday Inn, a film that debuted in that same year.

The short had Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig encouraging theater audiences to buy bonds for the war effort. An already short cartoon, even by the standards of film cartoon shorts (which rarely exceeded ten minutes in length), the film has been shortened in most releases today even further to excise a sequence where Bugs Bunny parodies a blackfaced Al Jolson.

Bugs Bunny parodies Al Jolson in blackface.
Bugs Bunny parodies Al Jolson in blackface.

Any Bonds Today? is also one of the last of five cartoons (counting this one) in which Elmer Fudd appeared as a chubbier version than his earlier and later appearances. The chubby Elmer was made to parody the physique of Elmer's voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan. Bob Clampett made these shorts with a fat Elmer because he could not make Porky fatter, as Porky had been in his first cartoon, I Haven't Got a Hat.

[edit] Censorship

  • This was one of the 12 Bugs Bunny cartoons that Time Warner declined to allow Cartoon Network to air during June Bugs in 2001 due to ethnic stereotypes (though this cartoon did air on a ToonHeads special about lost and rare cartoons, only with the Al Jolson part of the song cut).

[edit] References

  • Schneider, Steve (1990). That's All Folks!: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation. Henry Holt & Co.
Preceded by
The Wabbit Who Came to Supper
Bugs Bunny Cartoons
1942
Succeeded by
The Wacky Wabbit